Russia’s Federation Council has released a list of foreign organizations it plans to declare ‘undesirable’. The 12 entries in the document include the Soros Foundation and the US National Endowment for Democracy.

The upper house approved the list on its Wednesday session and
forwarded the document to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the
Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry. Speaker Valentina
Matviyenko told reporters that it had been created out of reports
from regional authorities that are concerned about alleged
subversive activities by certain organizations. She also noted
that the proposed version of the document is subject to change.

Matviyenko emphasized that the inclusion of the anti-Russian
groups on the blacklist would make their work transparent and
clear for local authorities, political and non-government
organizations.

“Today Russia faces its strongest attack in the past 25
years, targeting its national interests, values and
institutes,” reads the Federation Council’s address to state
agencies. “Its main goal is to influence the internal
political situation in the country, undermine the patriotic unity
of our people, undermine the integration processes within the CIS
space and force our country into geopolitical isolation,”
the senators state in the document.

The first list created in accordance with the recently-introduced
law ‘On Undesirable Foreign Organizations’ includes foreign and
international groups “known for their anti-Russian
bias.”

They are: the Open Society Institute, also known as the Soros
Foundation; the National Endowment for Democracy; the
International Republican Institute; the National Democratic
Institute; the MacArthur Foundation; Freedom House; the Charles
Stewart Mott Foundation; the Education for Democracy Foundation;
the East European Democratic Center; the Ukrainian World
Congress; the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council; and the
Crimean Field Mission on Human Rights.

The head of the Federation Council’s International Affairs
Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, told reporters that very often
the groups who posed as NGOs were working on orders from
government structures of foreign nations with the objective of
countering Russia’s interests.

The Law on Undesirable Foreign Organizations came into force in
early June this year. It requires the Prosecutor General’s Office
and the Foreign Ministry to make an official list of undesirable
foreign organizations and outlaw their activities. Once the group
is recognized as undesirable, all its assets in Russia must be
frozen, offices closed and distribution of any of its information
materials must be banned.

If the ban is violated, both the personnel of the outlawed group
and Russian citizens who cooperate with them face punishments of
heavy fines, or even prison terms in case of repeated or
aggravated offence.

Just days after the law came into force two senior Communist
Party MPs asked the Prosecutor General to use it against George
Soros’s Open Society organization. The lawmakers blamed the group
for “persistent anti-Russian activities both in Russia and in
other countries,” in particular for promoting hatred against
Russians in Ukraine via the destruction of the Russian education
system.